Cartoonist. He is best known for creating the "Dick Tracy" cartoon strip. Born in Pawnee, Oklahoma, he spent 10 years working on various comic strips at the Chicago “Tribune”-New York “News” Syndicate under editor Joseph Medill Patterson before creating "Dick Tracy" in 1931. (Patterson shortened the first name from his original "Plainclothes Tracy" to the then nickname for detective, and the result was comic strip immortality.) Armed with sidekick “Pat Patton” and then Sam “Catchem”, “Dick Tracy's” hawk nose and square chin symbolized straight-arrow law and order. Chester Gould's strip broke new ground with realistic, mangy villains and gritty violence. His artistic style developed into a stark black and white, reflecting the artist's own conservative values of right and wrong. Most of all, "Dick Tracy" introduced a legendary rogues gallery of evildoers for all time: “the Blank”, “Flattop”, “Pruneface”, “Mumbles”, “Brow”, “Influence”, “Shaky”, “Mrs. Pruneface”, “the Mole”, “Pearshape”, “Breathless Mahoney”, “Jerome Trohs” and “Mama”, “Itchy” and countless others. He also voyaged into science fiction with the two-way wrist radio, TV and computer, the less-successful space coupe, and trips to the Moon. Chester Gould retired from "Dick Tracy" in 1977, and his feature has been made into radio shows, television cartoons and movies, most recently Warren Beatty's 1990 motion picture version. He died in Woodstock, Illinois, where a museum is devoted to his work. (bio by: LincolnFan)